Law and order is the least of the Solomon Islands' problems

August 1 2003

The spread of crime and corruption has its origins in a depressing social cauldron, writes Kevin McCracken.

For Australians, the South Pacific is pretty much a mental black hole. Apart from providing a few interesting holiday destinations, the region is generally one most of us just fly over on our way to other parts of the world.

If the Prime Minister has nothing else on he will turn up at the periodic Pacific Islands Forum meetings, but otherwise just send the Foreign Affairs Minister along. In short, the region has not rated very high in either the Australian public or political consciousness.

The commitment of a sizeable Australian army and police intervention force to the Solomon Islands, however, will I hope awaken greater awareness of and interest in the region.

At the moment the focus is on the immediate problems of disorder and corruption in the Solomons, but if we widen our gaze we will see the problems in our regional backyard are far more widespread and deep-seated than that.

Crime and corruption are by no means confined to the Solomons. Similar problems, for example, have bedevilled Papua New Guinea on our northern doorstep for years, and the Solomons crisis could all too unfortunately prove to be just a small trial run for a far larger crisis and collapse there.");document.write("

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To varying degrees, similar problems plague a number of other of the island nations. Tongans, for instance, are still wondering about their king's former court jester and the millions of dollars lost from the Tongan Trust Fund. Nauru is another that has suffered deeply from large-scale corruption.

Important as these problems are, however, the fundamental and more difficult problems facing many of these nations are more of a social nature - population growth pressures, low levels of education, poor employment prospects, high levels of inequality.

Much of the decline in law and order and the spread of corruption we hear so much about have their origins in this social cauldron and, left unaddressed, these problems will provide a continuing fertile breeding ground for discontent and trouble.

To take the Solomons as an example. The immediate task is obviously to restore order, but that will be the easy part. Less easy to solve will be the pressure of high population growth, currently standing at a rate of 2.9 per cent a year. The Solomons' population is estimated to be 477,000; by 2020 it is expected to be more than 700,000. At present, secondary school enrolment rates are only 30 per cent for boys, and 18 per cent for girls. Meeting this large unmet need for education will be hard enough in itself. But by 2020 there will be about 30,000 or so more Solomon Islanders of secondary school age. Over the same period the number of 18-to-23-year-olds is likely to increase by about 35,000. Will the economy be able to find space for these new job seekers?

Papua New Guinea presents a similar picture. Population growth is a bit lower (2.2 per cent a year) than in the Solomons, but will nonetheless see numbers expand from their current 5.6 million to about 7.8 million by 2020.

How the country will cope with this increase is difficult to see.

As in the Solomons, secondary school enrolment rates in PNG are very low (boys, 24 per cent; girls, 18 per cent) and will take enormous investment to raise. Even lifting these current rates will be difficult, without considering the additional pressure of high school age numbers increasing by the projected 40 per cent between 2000 and 2020.

Then, for those graduating from secondary school, there is the question mark over the PNG labour force's absorptive capacity. At present, there is only about one job available for every four high school graduates.

Completing the picture is a poverty rate of about 40 per cent and a level of income inequality even higher than that in Australia.

Similar profiles could be drawn for numerous other island states in the region - Nauru, Kiribati, Vanuatu, among others.

A useful summary idea of the social and economic disadvantage facing many is given by the United Nations' so-called "human development index". This measure brings together information on education, income and health. On the latest calculation of the index Australia scores 0.939 (out of 1), one of the top scores in the world. By comparison, Kiribati rates 0.52, Papua New Guinea 0.535, Vanuatu 0.542, Tuvalu 0.58, and the Solomons 0.622.

Lifting these scores is likely to be considerably more difficult than the police and army mission to restore law and order in the Solomons.

Dr Kevin McCracken is a senior lecturer in the department of human geography at Macquarie University.